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[Airships in 1.12.3] HooliganLabs Mods

JewelShisen

By JewelShisen
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JewelShisen

JewelShisen

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2 hours ago, Daniel Prates said:

Gentleman! A little help?

I can't for the life of me understand how to spot the Center of Buoyancy. The old 'procedural airhips' mentions something as it appearing along the center of lift but that does not work.... help!

Ok so number 1: I had no input or connection to Procedural Airships so any info on their parts is their own.

Number 2: For HL Airships, Center of Bouyancy is, mostly, the same as the CoL. 

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Daniel Prates

Daniel Prates

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1 hour ago, JewelShisen said:

Number 2: For HL Airships, Center of Bouyancy is, mostly, the same as the CoL. 

Hum .... no, that's not it. In any airship I create, the CoL appears outside of the vessel (like, in the ground and far behind it), as with any other vehicle created without wings or control surfaces. 

Then, if I place control surfaces on the airship (for instance, elevators and rudder in it's stern) the CoL appears on them, reflecting that the blue visible CoL is pointing the LIFT parts, and only them. 

 

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SpannerMonkey(smce)

SpannerMonkey(smce)

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On 14/02/2017 at 10:16 PM, Daniel Prates said:

Hum .... no, that's not it. In any airship I create, the CoL appears outside of the vessel (like, in the ground and far behind it), as with any other vehicle created without wings or control surfaces. 

Then, if I place control surfaces on the airship (for instance, elevators and rudder in it's stern) the CoL appears on them, reflecting that the blue visible CoL is pointing the LIFT parts, and only them. 

 

Hi Airships are not aircraft, the center of lift as provided by control  srf's winglets is irrelevant to a great extent, as a rule with a ship consisting of just hull sections the col is as mentioned the same as the com, 

Aerodynamic lift is not factored at all in the hull parts creation. generally all that matters is that the ship is properly balanced along its length and width, building an Airship like you build an aircraft is the wrong approach, an aircraft in KSP typically has the Com offset rearwards, doing this in an airship would simply cause you to be constantly fighting a nose down attitude, requiring either constant input of lots of power wasting trim

For best results only worry about the position of the center of mass, as that and only that will determine the flight handling characteristics .  The only element of aerodynamic lift to be concerned about is control authority 

Experience has shown that regardless of what parts you attach you should aim for the craft to be balanced as near perfect fore and aft , so that just hanging in the air, while not under power,  it sits fairly level . The most stable airships will also have the  Com low down in the hull,  this is usually achieved by mounting almost everything below the crafts center line, any excess mass above the center line can create horrible flight characteristics and instability in turns

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Daniel Prates

Daniel Prates

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@SpannerMonkey(smce) thanks, but that's not what i was talking about. I pretty much already know everything you said.  Maybe I should explain better. In lighter than air ships, there should be a center of BUOYANCY, around which your CoM has to be planned. I read that "procedural airships" has a way to make it visible in the VAB-SPH - it was supposed to be accessible with the CoL button somehow, but I dont know. I inquired wether HLAirships had a way to display Center of BUOYANCY,  to which @JewelShisen responded that it is in the CoLIFT (which it isn't. It will only display the mean center for all LIFT generating parts, disregarding buoyancy alltogether).

So the sum of your answers makes me beleive that no, no Center of Buoyancy is displayed in anyway whatsoever. That makes designing a bit hard, since after you stary adding parts, the CoM will move all around. So where do you place it lastly in the final touches, since you do not know where the center of buoyancy is?!?! By trial and error?!

But I found a workaround. Its not ideal but will do. It relies in the idea that the vessels CoM coincides with the CoBuoyancy when you have only the floating parts added. What you do is: build the float envelope without any other parts. Check the original CoM's position and "mark" it with a very light part, like an antenna. Then go about  adding everything else: fuel tanks, engines, cockpits etc. When you are done, the CoM changed. It is now far from the CoBuoyancy, but how could you slide around parts in order to balance it, since you have no way to spot the center of buoyancy? That is what the original "marking" was for. Its a workaround but it works.

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JewelShisen

JewelShisen

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@Daniel Prates If that works for you then great.

That said; I have built multiple Airships and have never needed a CoB marker to balance it. I simply keep the CoM centered front to back and down need the bottom. After that the HL Auto Level feature corrects for any other imbalance in the ship. 

3 hours ago, SpannerMonkey(smce) said:

Structural and aero generally for the larger parts , some of the older stuff may be still in utility, If in doubt check the cfg;s

Correct! Legacy parts are utility and the Heisenburg parts are in their own tab

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Daniel Prates

Daniel Prates

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3 hours ago, JewelShisen said:

@Daniel Prates If that works for you then great.

That said; I have built multiple Airships and have never needed a CoB marker to balance it. I simply keep the CoM centered front to back and down need the bottom. After that the HL Auto Level feature corrects for any other imbalance (...)

Oh! I had no idea this could be done. You mean, to keep the CoM exactelly in the " geometric middle" of the ship and let the auto do the rest? Whenever I neglect balancing, when I set the auto-altitude, either the nose or the stern will point up very sharply. 

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JewelShisen

JewelShisen

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1 minute ago, Daniel Prates said:

Oh! I had no idea this could be done. You mean, to keep the CoM exactelly in the " geometric middle" of the ship and let the auto do the rest? Whenever I neglect balancing, when I set the auto-altitude, either the nose or the stern will point up very sharply. 

There is the Auto Altitude button and then just under it is an Auto Pitch one. It HELPS to keep it balanced but can't work with anything too extreme!

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genericeventhandler

genericeventhandler

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Over the long weekend I downloaded the source, and added autoland and autohover to the code, 

Autoland will allow blimps or probes using the parachutes to touch down safely from high altitudes without supervision. 

Autohover will try and keep the ship at 65m, 500m, 1000m and 10km  altitude above terrain, it is not terrain following though so you still hit the mountains if you fly 270 from ksc. 

Is this mod being maintained? And would you like me to commit my modifications for review?

Geh. 

 

 

 

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JewelShisen

JewelShisen

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25 minutes ago, genericeventhandler said:

Over the long weekend I downloaded the source, and added autoland and autohover to the code, 

Autoland will allow blimps or probes using the parachutes to touch down safely from high altitudes without supervision. 

Autohover will try and keep the ship at 65m, 500m, 1000m and 10km  altitude above terrain, it is not terrain following though so you still hit the mountains if you fly 270 from ksc. 

Is this mod being maintained? And would you like me to commit my modifications for review?

Geh. 

 

 

 

Yes this mod is still being maintained and I will look into it on my next day off.

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ARS

ARS

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Uuuum... I'm new with this kind of mod (hovering balloon and airships). Can I ask how to operate the blimp correctly? It's somehow taking off nose-first and it flew straight upward like a missile at mach 1 instead of hovering slowly when I increase the buoyancy. Can I have a guideline how to operate this? Thanks

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